DM wand(s)

Blackwill · Post by **Blackwill** » Sat Apr 15, 2006 9:45 am

I can honustly say that splitting all DM options (more than we have now as far as I know) into aprox. 5 DM wands, divided into logical sections, instead of packing it all into one wand, is going to be far better in user-friendlieness. If a DM needs to do something quickly (which regularly happens of course) then delving into the options of one wand will take up to 5-7 layers of filters before reaching your designated option. This would slow reaction time of the DM and make the wand highly choatic.

I've worked with a split system of 5 wands (2 rings, a cloak, a belt and a staff actually) each with their own designated section of DM options.

The DM wand (main wand), Sound and visual effects wand, Faction wand, (N)PC behaviour wand, ...

Would you rather have a single wand, or a few with built in logic? Thoughts?

Overfilled Cup · Post by **Overfilled Cup** » Sat Apr 15, 2006 10:10 am

I think the wands need to be made so that functionally there easy to get what you need done with them. whether its one or three i care not.

Mayhem · Post by **Mayhem** » Sat Apr 15, 2006 11:32 am

The same can be said about the emote ball.

The current dialogue based one is disruptive and slow, and you cannot (AFAIK) map a particular often used emote from the ball onto the quickbar.

I would actually like to see this replaced with an "Emote Bag".

The bag would be a standard container. Inside the bag would be undropable "plot" gems, with each gem being the item that triggers a particular emote.

There would then be no intrusive dialogue when using the emotes.

With the bag on your quickbar, you can then access any emote with a max of 2 clicks. And frquently used emotes (like Track, for a ranger) can be mapped to the quickbar directly.

TennysonBull · Post by **TennysonBull** » Sat Apr 15, 2006 12:31 pm

mayhem - i like the emote bag concept too. quickslotting common functions is much better than any menu driven system.

Blackwill · Post by **Blackwill** » Sat Apr 15, 2006 1:20 pm

Exactly my point. The important thing is that emotes and DM wands should be quickly to use when quickslotted.

ç i p h é r · Post by **ç i p h é r** » Sat Apr 15, 2006 5:15 pm

The speed concerns are certainly valid but I'm not sure we can get away from using menu based tools entirely. Dialogues can be interactive whereas items are not (ie they can't report status or give feedback prior to activation).

I do like the container concept though. I think it would work well for things we want to quickslot, like emotes and DM actions. If there's no nesting limit (containers within containers), we could even model the DM wand dialogue tree with containers to help organize all the gems/miniwands/what have you's.

Ronan · Post by **Ronan** » Sat Apr 15, 2006 10:30 pm

The gui can be configured to call (server-side) scripts directly from it, so I don't think this is the sort of thing we will be able to plan until we've explored that functionality further.
http://nwn2forums.bioware.com/forums/vi ... &forum=100

However, consider that combining 5-7 DM wands into one just adds one conversation menu of 5-7 entries to the complexity. Add in convo-choice filtering based upon target type, location, etc, and you've reduced that even more.